the universe is beautiful but cold
by lydiamaartin
Summary: Three times Richard Gansey wanted to kiss Blue Sargent, and one time he did. ―- BlueGansey


**notes: **major character death warning, set in and around the books and in the not-so-distant future. probably dumb and sad. with the prompt _twilight woods_ which i strangely did not use for cabeswater.

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><p><span><strong>the universe is beautiful but cold<br>**_  
><em>tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us**  
><strong>these, our bodies possessed by light  
>tell me we'll never get used to it<p>

- _richard siken, crush_

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><p>The edge of everything glitters at her lips, vivid and dangerous and so terribly easy to love. He is half-dead before he even knows the difference between <em>everything<em> and _nothing_.

"Do you believe in alternate versions of reality?" he asks her one night, leaning against the side of his car as she sits on the hood, bright and tiny and vicious and afraid. Asking _do you believe in love_ is a tiring question, and one that he never manages to choke out of his throat, anyway.

"No," she says after a moment, drawing her hands to her knees, fingers threaded, like she's counting. The days till he forgets himself and kisses her, perhaps. "Why would you want another world?"

"I didn't say I wanted it," he protests, because, indeed, he cannot imagine a world where he might not know her, love her, want her, need her. "But I think they can exist. A world without our quest, a world where we've already succeeded – "

She looks sidelong at him, dark spikes hanging low over her eyes for once, the wind ruffling her hair out of its predestined style. "Why would you want to imagine that?" and he might be imagining it but she sounds more than a little wistful, more than a little sad. A dizzying sense of foreboding settles over him. "Wouldn't you rather be here, in the middle of a journey, not over and but not never started? Isn't that the best place to be?"

He waits a moment, holding her gaze, trying to shake the feeling of being so beautifully and utterly _doomed_, and then he hops up onto the hood of his car with her, despite the temptations brushing his bare skin against hers causes him. "I would rather be in any world we could be happy," he tells her, his head tilting of its own accord, leaning over until he presses his forehead against hers, their bodies touching in spots all the way down to their legs, electrifying and singularly dangerous.

"I don't think we were meant for other worlds," she tells him, and for one glorious, terrifying second, he thinks he may have lost the last ounce of his self-control and kissed her.

But he hasn't. He remains, unkissed and desperately wanting, as she slides off his car, her black hair almost blue in the moonlight, and he follows her after a second, another car ride spent wishing he could hold her hand looming in the nighttime ahead.

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><p>One more time, back in her kitchen, and it feels like they've treaded this road too many times to count, a brush of her hands, a secret look, the warmth of her skin near his own, and the fantasy of taking her on her kitchen counter right then and there flashes through his mind much too often to be a passing fancy.<p>

She's wearing a dress in colors that remind him of grapes. It has two double-knotted bows, one in front and one in back, and he's pretty sure he's daydreamed about untying those bows far too often for a single conversation when he's surrounded by his friends and her family. It takes him a moment to find the opportunity to step out and catch his breath; it doesn't do a very good job of returning to his lungs.

"Gansey," she says, his name a gemstone of precious blue or green or gold in her mouth, "Gansey, are you all right?"

He tilts his head back, up, up, up at the ceiling rising above him, feeling a lot like a deep-sea diver lost underwater, trying to break the surface of the ocean. He is drowning, or maybe he is being rescued. She smiles at him and he is never certain what the difference is, these days.

"Fine, Jane," he says, pushes himself up, and for a second, he wavers there in his balance, looking at her, half on his feet and half not, drinking in the sight of her. Spiky hair and warm brown skin and a necklace of rusted keys and her tiny hands, her pretty lips, the hollow of her collarbone, the veins of her arms. She is nothing so classically beautiful as the women he grew up surrounded by, and yet, here he is, heads over heels.

One moment, just for one, he's careening forward on his feet, off-balance, wanting too deeply, too much, feeling like if, in the next moment, he crashed to the floor and died from her kiss, it might be worth it. It would be worth it.

Blue clasps her hands over his arms and he steadies. He hadn't even been that off-balance to begin with. He looks at her and she traces her fingers down his forearms, bared where he'd rolled up his sleeves, and somehow he feels himself calm down. It's strange, how much and how heatedly he can want her when he's looking at her, and how comforting it is to be with her and touch her and not think about how much he wants her. What a miraculous creature Blue Sargent is.

"Thank you," he murmurs, but somebody slams a cupboard, and there's arguing, and footsteps, and she snatches her hands away from him. Back to pretending, to denying, to wishing. He's not sure if this is an easier life than just kissing her and being done with it.

"Don't go falling on my floors, Dick," she tells him and he makes a face at her back as they rejoin the others and it's back to normal, if only for a moment.

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><p>They are in the woods, and it is dark and damp and twisted with flickering firefly lights and leafy vines and danger, and he is soaked to the bone from rainwater. She is shaking, but the rain has passed, and the way out isn't far, and they can follow the path. He's not going to die tonight.<p>

But then he looks at her lips, and he wants to kiss the storm rains right off them. Maybe he will die tonight.

"Follow me," she says, out of breath, her boots crunching through leaves under their feet as she begins moving, one hand carting through her hair as it hangs flattened on here face. It's an unusual sight, to see it not swept up in her careless spikes. He kind of likes it. He kind of doesn't. He kind of wants to kiss her, kind of a lot.

"You know where we're going?" he can't resist asking, falling into step at her side, and she shoots him an upwards glance reminiscent of eye-rolling, but only halfway there. "I'm just making sure, Jane."

"I'm the one who lives in these parts," she says, kicking a branch out of way, all fire and spirit even in the deathly cold of a storm that's just passed. "Have any woods near Monmouth?"

"Unfair," he protests, trying not to smile. "I've been in woods before."

"Not these ones," she says, but she brushes her hand against his arm, lightly enough to be friendly, warm enough to be everything exactly the opposite, and guides him through a small passing until they emerge on the other side. "Told you so."

"Insufferable," he sighs, but he's glad to face the twilight glimmering around them instead of a canopy of leaves and branches overhead. "We should get back before people start to worry."

"People always worry," Blue says, and when she turns to him he is seized with the instant, not-unfamiliar desire to close the gap between them once and for all. He wonders if she'd taste like rain, wonders what rain tastes like, wonders what she tastes like normally, wonders what _he_ tastes like –

"Come on, Gansey," she says, and she's turning, and he's lost, utterly lost, as he watches her walk away, back towards her house and home and family and the happy chaos that had been her life before he'd swept in with old Welsh kings and rich prep boys and quiet ghosts and magical forests. His heart aches; it becomes hard to walk. He wants so very much to have been enveloped in her world instead of the other way around. Maybe in that world, they'd be happy.

But she looks back and throws him a smile, quick and bright and so very Blue, over her shoulder, and he remembers how to walk again. She did not let him take her into his world, after all, she stepped in and took his heart on her own. It's semantics, but it's important.

He does not die that night.

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><p>The night he dies, it goes like this: a whisper, a word, a magician, a forest, a crown, a king, a girl.<p>

A life for a life, a kiss for a death, a love for a girl, a wish for a boy, a king for a prince – here is how it ends. He kisses her and he tastes strawberry cake on her lips. He kisses her and she tastes like death. He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her. He dies.

"We have to do it," he says, one moment before the end. "Blue, we have to do it now," and she shakes her head, hair tangling in front of her face, wild, desperate, messy, and he sweeps her spikes out of her eyes, draws her close, thinks of Adam, dying, Ronan, watching him die, Noah, already dead.

Thinks of all those who have died for him already. Thinks of those who died before him. Thinks of those who will live if he dies. Kisses her. Dies.

"Gansey, no," she whispers, but it's a prayer to a lost god, and he gives her a smile meant for another world, another version of her, another life where her kiss isn't deadly, isn't tempting, isn't necessary. "We'll save him."

But they won't.

She knows it. She lets him kiss her. She kisses back, and she tastes sweet and sad. Strawberries and sorrow. He thinks of an hour ago, in her kitchen, eating cake with her parents, with her family, his family, their family. Their friends, dead or dying or both. Him, too alive to matter.

He thinks of now, entrenched in Cabeswater, just the five of them. The way it was meant to be. The five of them and his king. The end of it all and their new beginning.

He kisses her. He dies.

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><p><strong>an:** i would really appreciate reviews if you have a moment to favorite!


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